Epic Movie (Unrated Edition)

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All Rise...

Appellate Judge Dan Mancini's hatred of this movie is epic.

The Charge

We know it's big. We measured.

Opening Statement

Ugh.

Facts of the Case

Four orphans are brought together by fate. Lucy (Jayma Mays, Flags of Our Fathers) was raised by a
museum curator (David Carradine, Kill Bill:
Volume 2) who's murdered by an evil albino. Edward (Kal Penn, Harold and Kumar Go to White
Castle) lived in a Mexican monastery where the cook was a fat mustachioed
dude with a fondness for lucha libre wrestling. Adopted by Brad Pitt and
Angelina Jolie, Susan (Faune A. Chambers, The Cutting Edge 2: Going for the
Gold) is on her way to Namibia when her plane is attacked by snakes. Peter
(Adam Campbell, Date Movie) goes to a high
school for mutants and has a crush on a nude blue mutant named Mystique (Carmen
Electra, Scary Movie), but is an
outcast even among the outcasts because his mutation is a set of chicken
wings.

Make it stop.

Each of the four orphans obtains a golden ticket that allows them access to
Willy's (Crispin Glover, Back to the
Future) chocolate factory, where the sewer lines are open so poop can be
mistaken for a chocolate river and the Oompa Loompas make candy to
"Fergalicious." Yeah. Willy traps the orphans with the intent of using
their body parts in his candy, but they escape through a wardrobe into a magical
land called Gnarnia. There Lucy meets a faun named Mr. Tumnus (Héctor
Jiménez, Nacho Libre) who gives her
an MTV Cribs-style tour of his cave, then drops the 411 that Gnarnia is
stuck in an eternal winter because of the evil power of the White Bitch
(Jennifer Coolidge, Best of Show).

For the love of all things holy.

If our four highly annoying heroes are to unravel the mystery of their
secret lineage, they must join forces with a leonine lothario named Aslo (Fred
Willard, Waiting for Guffman) to
defeat the White Bitch. Or something like that.

Oh, and there's some references to the Harry Potter and Pirates of the
Caribbean flicks, Superman
Returns, and Borat wedged in there,
too.

Someone kill me.

Please.

Seriously.

The Evidence

It looks and sounds decent on DVD, though. On the whole, the transfer is
crisp, colorful, and entirely free of any source flaws. Minor haloing from edge
enhancement is occasionally noticeable, and isolated shots are riddled with
heavy grain and pixilation. But I was working from a screener copy. The actual
release version may look better. The audio presentation is a Dolby 5.1 mix that
has loads of clarity and a broad dynamic range. The mix is a little front heavy;
more creative use the rear soundstage would make the track more immersive.

This Unrated Edition runs seven minutes longer than the theatrical cut. I
haven't seen the shorter cut, but I think it's safe to assume the added material
makes this version six minutes and 55 seconds cruddier (taking into account five
seconds of bare breasts I assume weren't included in the PG-13 edit).

This single-disc release is also stacked with extras. First up is a
commentary by writing-directing team Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. They
spend an inordinate amount of time talking about the technical aspects of
filmmaking as if Epic Movie is an actual film. None of what they say
makes the movie funny, but it does prove that they're amazingly oblivious to how
big a dud they foisted on us. That might be funny if it weren't so sad.
There's also an audio option called "Breaking Wind" that pushes the
wacky sound effects and foley work more forward in the mix. It's a waste of
time. Seven featurettes are as embarrassingly unfunny as the feature, and an
amateur short film by a viral video contest winner makes you wonder how lame the
losers were. Finally, there is a brief collection of outtakes and an alternate
ending.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

I know what you're thinking: That five-sentence paragraph up there is a
lazy excuse for a review, Dan. Well, Epic Movie is a lazy excuse for
a movie. Supposedly funny, it doesn't bother itself making actual jokes. It
poorly mimics scenes from much better movies (and a movie could be a total piece
of crap and still be much better than Epic Movie) and pretends that said
mimicry is parody. It isn't. What it is is an exercise in pop culture inanity:
Ashton Kutcher's exaggerated, spastic persona is annoying; some kid doing a
hyper-exaggerated, hyper-spastic imitation of Kutcher isn't funny, it's
hyper-annoying.

Want to see a kid named Jareb Dauplaise (Entourage) do a half-assed
impersonation of Nacho Libre? Want to watch David Carradine embarrass himself by
pretending he's Ian McKellen in The Da
Vinci Code? Want to see a hip-hop "Gnarnia" where there's a
talking beaver named Harry Beaver? Want to see Carmen Electra as X-Men's blue-bodied Mystique? Want to see
Crispin Glover torpedo his weirdo indie cred in a clunky paean to Tim Burton's
Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory? Want to see Kal Penn continue to demonstrate that his hilarity in
Harold and Kumar Go to White
Castle was a fluke? Want to see a game of Siddoku played with urine? Want to
see Fred Willard fight an albino in a scene whose shtick is stolen directly from
I'm Gonna Git You Sucka? If you think you might answer yes to any of
these questions, you're wrong (except maybe for the Carmen Electra thing). You
don't want to see any of this. Trust me. Epic Movie's gross disregard for
plot, character, comic timing, and the basic structure of a good joke hurt me.
Don't let it hurt you.